


It Seemed Like A Bad Idea At The Time

by Istezada



Category: Critical Role (Web Series), Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Alternate Universe, Alternate Universes are fun!, Don't copy to another site, F/M, Hopping between universes is something entirely different, M/M, Percival de Rolo is so long-winded, Percy takes a calculated risk, Plane Shifting is one thing, Post-Apocawasn't, Post-Campaign 1 (Critical Role), Vex has a bear and Pepper is jealous, but man is he bad at math, discussion of racism (fantasy and IRL), established relationships - Freeform, who let Percy think he's the adult in the room?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-14 22:08:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29053395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Istezada/pseuds/Istezada
Summary: Featuring Percy's A+ decision making skills, the Patented Vex'ahlia de Rolo Eyebrows, an adorable bear, an unexpected musical instrument, an angel, a demon, some children, and a witch. Also pie, but Percy doesn't get any.Set mid-Sydenstar 814 and early May 2020, depending on which universe you're looking at.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Percival "Percy" Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III/Vex'ahlia
Comments: 2
Kudos: 33





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I started writing this late April-early May 2020, dragged three-ish chapters into existence by July, and then lost them all when my computer crashed. Sometime in November, my brain wandered back to the idea and demanded I start again. And here we are.
> 
> Beta'd by the lovely and talented [Batyatoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/batyatoon/pseuds/batyatoon), who is lovely and talented and who didn't laugh at me _too_ hard when I realized I'd forgotten that Percy wears glasses. Any remaining egregious sins are my own.

“Huh,” said Percival de Rolo, staring from the stick in his hand to the room in front of him. Well, not the _room_. His mother’s old music room looked more or less like he’d expected, including the raven perched outside the round, barred window. Carefully dusted and otherwise ignored for the past four years. Possibly it had been ignored for longer than that. It was one of many questions he’d never asked Cassandra about the years… between. The stick, however (okay, yes, it was a magic wand, not a stick), had illuminated one particular instrument with the “Hey, this thing is magic” glow he’d been hoping to not see.

Yes. Yes, it was almost four years since the Briarwoods had been killed (for the first or second time, depending on which one of them you were discussing… ugh, necromancers) and their followers and creatures ousted from Whitestone. Yes, that was a lot of time to clear out any remaining artifacts and traps and other things more nasty from his family’s castle and the town in general. Yes, he had a nearly two-year-old daughter who liked to explore places she shouldn’t be able to reach, find new and exciting things to put in her mouth and/or throw, and then babble about the entire experience. _Yes_ , that was terrifying.

It had been a _busy_ four years though. His little sister, as ever, had done most of the work of clearing and re-building Whitestone. Percy’d been… well, busy. Between the Chroma Conclave and Vecna and Vax (he glanced at the raven and grimaced), he hadn’t been home predictably for about half the time. It’d taken a while for Whitestone to feel like home again. It’d taken a while for Whitestone to feel like home for Vex, after… everything. 

“I _am_ sorry about the elopement,” he said to the raven. It was the easiest thing to say to it. Of all the things he’d say, if he could. If he’d had more time at the official wedding last year. If…

If he could get back to the matter at hand, maybe?

He liked to think that a quartet of invading dragons, an elopement, the rise of an undead god (as well as the return to life, and second killing and escape, of the Briarwoods, respectively), the death of a brother-in-law, a couple of (thankfully) quick trips to the Hells and the Abyss, official marriage, and the third and (hopefully) final death of Sylas Briarwood at the hands of his wife, might be considered severely extenuating circumstances when placing judgment on the fact that there was, for some reason, a large, unfamiliar, enchanted instrument sitting calmly under the window where his mother used to keep her harp.

But it was still _there_. Four years after the Briarwoods had been removed from Whitestone and nine years after they’d murdered almost all of his family, it was still there. Waiting to be found. Right there in the open.

He didn’t recognize it. It wasn’t one of the de Rolo instruments, unless someone had dug it out of a storage room somewhere, which was always possible. But for _some_ reason, a strange instrument of dubious provenance, glowing with conjuration magic, that may or may not have been personally enchanted or otherwise acquired by the Briarwoods, made him nervous.

Percy was going to call it nervousness, anyway.

Fortunately, Pike and Scanlan had cheerfully kidnapped Vesper for a couple of weeks as an anniversary present, so at least he didn’t have to worry about his daughter licking the thing before he figured out whether or not it would turn her into a vampire if she did.

No, he wasn’t exaggerating. Well. Mostly. Yes, this was his life.

His magical stick of detecting magic didn’t react to anything _else_ in the room, at least. So that was something. It had, honestly, been several months since the last time he’d found an unexpected magical item squirreled away somewhere in the castle.

Progress.

Woo.

Percy stuffed the wand into his jacket pocket and went to have a closer look.

It was a beautifully made instrument. Finely turned and carved legs held a box covered with intricate inlays of multiple shades of wood, over which was set a horizontal rod, holding a series of glass bowls in concentric sizes. Given the design elements of the inlays, he would guess that the instrument was of elven make, but otherwise he had no idea where it might have come from. Or what it might conjure, if played.

How charming.

Grunting, Percy dropped to his knees to examine the construction in more detail, starting with the legs and moving slowly across the body of the instrument. But eventually, he sat back on his heels, frustrated. Granted, he wasn’t a master cabinet maker, but there didn’t seem to be any physical trigger to whatever the enchantment was, beyond actually playing the instrument, however that was done.

So _probably_ it was safe to move to his workshop, which was almost infinitely more secure than the music room. Probably, also, it wouldn’t turn anyone into a vampire for licking it. Human-to-vampire would be some unholy mixture of transmutation and necromancy anyway, instead of conjuration.

Probably.

Of course, maybe if he shattered the bowls, ground them into powder, and burned the wooden frame, the enchantment would be broken. But it was an enchanted item, so that was just as likely to backfire spectacularly. Or the thing might just refuse to be destroyed in so casual a manner.

Sticking his head into the hallway, Percy saw Sa’elethil, a stocky elf who’d joined the household sometime last year, and waved her down. “Fetch a couple more people, if you would. The wand found something and I need it taken to my workshop.”

“Certainly, my lord,” she said, nodding curtly and turning away from whatever she’d been doing.

“Oh. Have them bring a blanket or two with them,” he called after her.

She just waved this time and kept moving.

Percy’s lips twitched at the raven when he re-entered the music room. “You’d like her,” he said. “She’s very polite and gives Cassandra and me _so_ much shit. And she’s not an ass to Vex, so…”

The raven made its usual rattling noise and tilted its head at him.

“Exactly.”

Gods, he had to stop talking to the damned things. It was… easier... to be around them, since the wedding last year, if not by a lot. Seeing Vax again had been a piece of closure he resented needing or receiving. If the Matron of Ravens hadn’t taken Vax, if Vax hadn’t made the fucking deal in the first place, if Percy’s moment of carelessness hadn’t made it necessary for Vax to _make_ the deal…

If wishes were horses, Scanlan Shorthalt would have three more than most people ever got to see.

They saved Exandria from the Whispered One, Percy lost a friend, his wife lost her other half, and now there were ravens all over the bloody place.

The gods worked in mysterious ways, apparently.

And, also apparently, his plan to distract himself from the anniversary of all of that by searching his home for magical deathtraps wasn’t working in the slightest.

It took half an hour to swaddle the rod of glass bowls in blankets and carefully carry (okay, no, he didn’t do any of the actual carrying, personally) the entire contraption up and down various stairs and get it safely behind his workshop doors.

It was some time after _that_ when his wife found him, bent over a large sheet of paper sketching the instrument’s dimensions and scribbling theories of what it might summon (or send), if used properly.

“Oh, _there_ he is. Trinket, you’ll never guess! He’s in his workshop!”

Percy glanced up at the woman (and bear) standing in his doorway and snorted laughter.

“Was I hiding?” he asked.

“Just missing,” Vex replied, wandering in and leaning against his shoulder to look at his work.

Percy grinned up at her and then blinked, realizing how stiff his back was. “What time is it?”

The eyebrow he got in return (the patented Vex’ahlia de Rolo eyebrow, only slightly more famous than her wink) made him wince. “Only an hour past dinnertime, darling.”

“An hour! Vesper…” he blinked again and sagged in relief, “… is with her aunt and uncles in Westruun. Okay. Good. That’s good.”

The eyebrow didn’t waver.

Percy straightened and adopted his most penitent expression. “And I have neglected my wife most egregiously.”

“ _Most_ ,” Vex agreed, but her lips twitched. “Just so much. Trinket ate your slice of pie.”

Trinket looked smug.

“Did you? What kind was it?”

Trinket looked more smug and licked his lips.

“Blackberry,” answered his wife.

“Zogi’s blackberry pie. Alas. That does seem fair though, Trinket.”

The bear nodded and Percy was rewarded with Vex’s laughter and a hand through his hair.

“I assume the harmonica is the result of today’s search and not… please tell me you aren’t planning to mechanize it somehow, Percy.”

“Harmonica?” Percy took off his glasses and rubbed the line left on the bridge of his nose. “Is that what it is? I found it in Mother’s music room.”

“Father had one.” Vex left him and circled the thing, looking wary and amused, a little bitter and a little sad, which was par for the course when talking about her childhood. “I was supposed to learn how to play it.” The complex emotions faded as she darted a wicked grin at him. “I learned how to shoot arrows around corners instead.”

He smirked, tucking the wire ends of his glasses back over his ears. “That sounds much more exciting.”

“Oh, it was.” She laughed and reached out to gently run a finger along the edge of the wooden box. Percy would have twitched, but it wasn’t like it hadn’t been touched while transporting it in here. “Father lost so many vases and knickknacks to that bow.”

Percy snorted at that and Vex returned to his side to study his notes. “ _Not_ planning on mechanizing it then.”

“Not until I know what it does,” he retorted, vaguely indignant. “How does it work? A non-enchanted one, I mean.”

“Oh. You wet the bowls or just your fingers, depending on the style, and… see the foot pedal? That rotates the bowls and when you touch them, they sing. I suppose it’s a vibration, technically, between your fingerprints and the glass. Or something. It’s quite pretty when done properly.” She tapped one calloused finger at the top of his diagram. “Conjuration?”

“Yup.”

“That’s…”

“Unnerving. It is, yes.”

“Music and conjuration.”

“And gems. Look.” He picked up one of the lamps from his desk and moved it back and forth. The light played across the intricate inlays, twinkled through the glass bowls, and…

“Okay, that’s honestly impressive,” Vex said, bending closer to squint at what Percy was pretty sure was gem dust mixed into whatever glue had been used to affix the individual delicate pieces of veneer in the overall design.

“Oh, it’s beautiful craftsmanship,” Percy said bitterly, “I just wish I knew what they _wanted_ it for.”

Vex stilled for a pair of heartbeats before looking back at him. “It’s definitely not one of yours then?”

“I’ve never seen it before in my life. I didn’t even know what it _was_.”

“That’s exciting. Music, conjuration, gems, and the Briarwoods.”

Trinket growled softly and they both reached to scratch whatever bit of his anatomy was the closest.

“I know, buddy,” Vex said.

“My thoughts exactly,” Percy agreed.

“Okay, so… what conjuration spells need music? Or gems? I’m going to breeze right on past the idea that the Briarwoods might be integral to making the thing work. It’d be simpler, but...”

“… it doesn’t sound like them,” he finished with a sigh, and got a quick kiss on the cheek in response. “If you’ll grab that blue volume on the middle shelf, we can do some research. If we can’t figure it out from there, I’ll send word to Shaun or Allura.”

It turned out that a _lot_ of conjuration spells required gems. But only one. A single, solitary spell. Only one used music.

Plane Shift.

“That’s…” Vex began.

“Okay,” Percy said at the same time. “I… huh. You first.”

“We know Plane Shift needs a tuning fork that’s been tuned specifically to a single plane in order to teleport _to_ that plane…”

Percy stared down at the harmonica. “You could vibrate up to ten bowls at once, if you wanted to. Twenty, if two people facing each other played simultaneously. I don’t know if that would actually work, of course. Sorry, thinking out loud. Teleport to… that doesn’t make any sense. Ten _different_...” His eyes widened and he felt Vex slip an arm around his waist. “Vex,” he breathed. “If a tuning fork, that makes a single note, can teleport people to another plane, what would an instrument that makes ten different notes simultaneously do?”

“Not go multiple places. Not all at once. That would… hurt? It sounds generally unhealthy anyway. Right, it’s been a while since my cosmology lessons, darling, but aren’t there something like twenty different planes?”

“Twenty-five. Ish.”

“So… New planes?”

Sometimes, Percy thought absently, he adored his wife. Sometimes, she scared him. “New planes,” he repeated. “ _Different_ planes, Vex. A whole different set of planes.”

“What other planes could there be?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” he said, suddenly breathless.

“That,” Vex grumbled, after a long silence, “sounds _exactly_ like something Delilah would want access to.”

“We should ask Cass about it.”

“Hey, Cassandra, quick question. Did you, or they, ever play that fancy harmonica in the downstairs music room? What happened? Any exciting adventures you haven’t told us about?”

He groaned and thunked his head sideways against hers. “Forget I said anything.”

“It probably wouldn’t have worked for Cass anyway,” Vex pointed out. “She does even less magic than you do.”

That was little comfort, since regular, normal, _boring_ plane shifting worked on whole groups of people, as long as they were touching the person casting the spell.

“We should definitely call Shaun or Allura and get it properly identified,” Percy said slowly.

Vex’s head turned, just enough for her to side-eye him. “Ye-es?”

Trinket snorted amusement from her other side.

“We should at _least_ call the others.”

“Darling?”

“Yes, dear?”

“Spit it out.”

“… Wanna try it?”

For several seconds, they stared at each other.

“How would we even move around… wherever we end up… with the thing?” Vex asked, ever the practical one.

“We could just… take a quick look?”

“I can’t believe you think you’re the adult in the room, Percy,” she said, laughing. “Okay, we take a quick look and then how do we get _home_?”

“ _If_ the thing was created to shift to another… group of planes…”

“Universe.”

“Universe. Nice. If that’s what it was designed to do, it should obviously be _tuned_ to this one.”

“Should it?”

“It’s logical. Any traveler is going to want to come home again, eventually, right? What’s the point of _secrets_ if you don’t get to know them when other people don’t?”

Vex snorted, but… “That does make a certain amount of sense,” she admitted.

“So we play some chord or other to _go_ , but to get _home_ we just play a chord in whatever the thing is tuned to.”

This, of course, meant that they spent a while with his roll of perfectly normal, non-enchanted tuning forks (“Why do you even _have_ these, Percy?”), carefully figuring out that the harmonica had been keyed in D. For some reason.

“For the record, the tuning forks are for tuning… things. Eventually.”

“Of course they are, darling.”

He grinned and put them away again before returning to the harmonica. “Okay…”

“A _quick_ look,” she repeated.

“Absolutely.”

Vex shook her head, but tucked a hand into his elbow and reached out to grab Trinket with her other hand.

“Pick a key, dear?”

“Mmm, G?”

Percy counted down the bowls, set them spinning, gave his hands to Trinket for a thorough slobber, and touched his fingers to the bowls for a G major seventh chord.


	2. Chapter 2

“… Huh.”

Percy looked around, taking in the environment of unnaturally smooth road and towering buildings in a variety of architectural styles he’d never seen before, at least half of which had clearly been engineered with magical assistance. Construction wizards? Interesting. It seemed like a reasonable occupation, but his brain flatly refused to imagine any wizards of his acquaintance being at all interested in mundane architecture.

He _also_ stared at the complete lack of a harmonica in front of him.

That…

... was not a possibility he’d considered.

Keyleth’s tuning forks didn’t disappear. They came with her. She plane shifted Vox Machina and then tucked the fork away in her pocket. Every time.

Beside him, Vex noticed the same thing. She whirled, releasing his arm, in case the instrument was behind them for some reason.

It wasn’t.

“Shit, Percy!” Vex’s voice shattered the silence of the eerily empty streets. “We just… we just _left_ her!”

Something in Percy’s chest, somewhere around where he usually kept his heart, clenched in pain at the panic in her voice. Which conveniently held off his own panic. For the moment. Gods…

“She’s with Pike,” he said, gripping Vex by her shoulders. “Vex. Vex, listen to me. Vesper is with Pike. She’ll be okay until we get back.” His voice was shaking, but so was she. Trinket sidled closer, bumping his flank against her back and buffering her from the (his brain kept taking _notes_ ) much cooler air of this place.

Eventually, Vex nodded and he pulled her close (Trinket helped) for a mutually needed moment of clinging.

“The _fuck_ …” said a bewildered voice behind them.

He spun, rotating around Vex’s shoulder. Battle-ingrained instincts left the three of them in a triangle formation, each facing a different direction, without bothering to waste time talking about it.

Percy found himself staring down a tall, improbably lanky individual dressed in varying shades of black (including a mask patterned like black and coppery-red snakeskin… it matched his bright ginger hair, of all things) and peculiar dark spectacles. Everything about the man’s posture indicated surprise and confusion.

Well. That made four of them.

“You have a _bear_. In the middle of bloody… Are you with the Tower? Must be with the Tower. You can’t be from the Tower, we would have heard about it and _he_ would be sulking because he wouldn’t let himself go see it. Some sort of promo for the V&A, then?”

Percy raised an eyebrow, painfully aware that the man _seemed_ to be unarmed, but so too were he and Vex. (The stranger was, in fact, carrying curious white bags made of some sort of filmy, translucent material that _crinkled_ like slippery dry leaves when they shifted against his legs.) Trinket, of course, came with his own weaponry. “I beg your pardon?”

The man shook his head and continued his (apparently rhetorical) questioning. “But what kind of…” He took two steps, as if to begin circling them, and Percy stiffened. The man stilled and an eyebrow rose above the black glasses. “Your clothes don’t match,” he said accusingly. “Who _are_ you? Where are you from? You can’t be anyone official or you’d be… with the…” He lifted one hand, sack and all, and gestured at his mostly-covered face.

Percy blinked. There was something wrong with their clothes? Where _was_ everyone? “Percival Fredrickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III,” he said politely, “of Whitestone.”

"Whitestone?” The ginger’s head tilted in a way that suggested his spine wasn’t strung quite the same way Percy’s was. “In Devon?” Taking Percy’s confused silence for answer, the stranger took half a step forward. “ _Not_ from Devon,” he said, tone suddenly flooded with delight. “With a _bear_.”

Trinket chuffed, pleased that the strange man was so obviously impressed by him.

“We’re new in town,” Vex said, which could hardly be a shock to anyone. “Oh, and darling?”

“Hmm?” Percy responded.

“We have company.”

Percy shot a glance in her direction and discovered a collection of people in eye-searing yellow jackets heading towards them. They all wore masks as well.

“Bloody coppers,” the first man sighed, as if personally inconvenienced. “Look. ‘M Crowley. I don’t know who you are, where you’re from, or why you have a bear in the middle of central sodding London. But we should get all of you off the streets.”

Percy and Vex exchanged a glance. Vex shrugged, so Percy turned back to the red-haired man and nodded. “Okay.”

Crowley, their now-guide, somehow managed to snap his fingers before jerking his head to indicate a direction and setting off. Percy, Vex, and Trinket fell in behind him. Crowley was seemingly content to ignore the “coppers” as they moved and no one gave chase, though there was a great deal of confused shouting in their wake, so Percy warily ignored them as well.

“So, Percival Fredrickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III,” Crowley said conversationally as they walked north-ish and it started to rain.

“Yes?” Percy asked, when Crowley didn’t say anything further.

“Just wanted to see if I could remember it all.”

Despite himself, Percy chuckled. “Percy’s fine, though there’s more, if you really feel like showing off.”

Crowley shrugged one thin shoulder. “Nah. Why do you have a bear?”

“I don’t,” Percy answered, lips twitching.

“Because he’s _adorable_ ,” said Vex at the same time, reaching up to pat Trinket’s side.

“He’s…” Behind his dark glasses, Crowley looked them over dubiously and without even trying for subtlety. (Trinket grumbled. Vex looked outraged.) “… adorable. Yes, quite. Perfectly sensible reason to have a bear.” (Trinket subsided. Vex looked mollified.)

“Where is everyone?” Vex asked, finally bringing up the silence around them.

Crowley managed to trip over his own two snaking feet (seriously, the man had the oddest gait Percy’d ever seen) and almost face-planted into the pavement. “Ngk!” After righting himself, he just stared down at them in evidently stunned silence.

Vex smiled calmly back at him. “We are new in town, remember?”

"New in… London… right. D’you not… Where…” A shake of his head tossed bright red hair out of his face and he actually looked helplessly confused for a moment before pulling himself together. “Never mind. Later. We’ll explain all that. First we need to get off the streets. Down here.”

“Down here” turned out to be some sort of underground system of stairs and tunnels that led, after Crowley waved them through a set of curious waist-high gates, to a tiled stage alongside a series of huge metal bars laid end-to-end on the ground that appeared from and disappeared into the darkness of _another_ tunnel. Crowley stood with what seemed like an attempt at nonchalance and watched them look around.

There were other people on the stage, but not many. Not as many as the platform was obviously designed to hold. No one gave the four of them more than a passing glance while Percy wiped rain from his spectacles and studied the host of unintelligible signs and lists on the walls.

“And this is…?” Vex asked after several moments’ wait.

Percy got the impression that the man was grinning behind his mask. “Tube station,” he answered cheerily.

“Helpful.”

“St. Paul’s?” Crowley offered next. “Central line?”

“Fascinating,” Vex said dryly.

“Seriously, wh… never mind,” the man repeated. “Later.”

Shortly thereafter, after repeated advisement from a disembodied voice to “mind the gap”, whatever that meant, Percy got completely distracted from Crowley’s peculiarity and the whole terrifying situation by the deafening arrival of…

It seemed to be a series of connected carriages that traveled along those metal bars. Doors opened automatically (magically or mechanically? Percy couldn't tell) and Crowley hurried them all inside one carriage. Doors closed behind them and the entire string of vehicles began moving again.

It was loud. And _fascinating_. There was no sign of propulsive force. No animals pulling or pushing. Nothing connecting the… he was going to call it a train, since it was one… train to any sort of mechanical system in the ceiling or floor that he’d noticed, though he assumed that the whole thing slid, somehow, on those bars he’d seen. Something like a wildly complicated waterwheel would work, but if this was a means of transportation for a city wealthy enough to casually employ wizards to construct buildings for everyday use…

Maybe some sort of engine, like they used in Kraghammer for their trip hammers. Some used waterwheels, but he’d seen glimpses of others that used fire somehow. Not that dwarves were generally interested in sharing their engineering with outsiders, but… this couldn’t be fire. There was no smoke. The tunnels would have been smogged with it, if the train was powered by fire.

“Huh,” he grunted, staring up at a scuffed and illegible sign near the ceiling of the carriage.

Beside him, Vex snorted and scolded Trinket for trying to sniff Crowley’s bags.

Their carriage stopped multiple times before Crowley ushered them out onto yet another tiled platform. Percy had no way to estimate how far they’d traveled, but a blind man could see the possibilities offered by such a means of transportation. It’d probably be impractical in Whitestone (though a method to quickly transport people between the town and the castle would be an incredible advantage, should Whitestone ever be attacked again), but somewhere like Emon or Vasselheim would benefit greatly from this kind of transportation. Below ground, it wouldn’t even muck up the street traffic!

Trinket bumped into him at the same time that Vex said “Percy, darling.” and he found himself standing in the middle of the tiled stage, staring after the vanishing train of compartments.

“Yes. Sorry. Hello?”

Vex’s lips twitched. “Following our mysterious guide to somewhere ‘off the streets’, Percy?”

Percy turned and discovered Crowley watching them with badly hidden curiosity.

“This way,” was all the other man said. He led them up some more stairs and out into a… well, that was different architecture. In places. Huh.

“Is this still…” what had Crowley called the place? “… London?”

“Soho. So yes.”

So… what?

“Also no. You were in the City of London, before. Now we’re outside it. Still in London, mind. But not.”

“Glad that’s cleared up,” Vex muttered.

Crowley spluttered laughter behind his mask, but didn’t offer further explanation.

This Soho was approximately as empty as wherever they’d been before. Despite Crowley’s obvious surprise at Trinket’s presence, no one else seemed to find anything unusual about their little group, which was… interesting and magical, presumably. As opposed to the towering red... vehicle... that rolled by at one point, which was definitely (somehow) mechanical, given the sound of busily moving parts and the stink of badly burning oil

Not many minutes later, Crowley stopped at a street corner and pushed open a door under gilt letters reading “A. Z. Fell and Co. Antiquarian and Unusual Books”, which would have gotten Percy’s attention even without taking into consideration that it was the first thing he’d been able to read since they arrived in London. Crowley ushered them all past the tinkling bell and called “S’just me, angel!” over their heads. “I’ve brought people!”

Percival de Rolo had never seen so many books in one place before in his _life_.

“Merciful fucking Pelor,” Vex muttered and turned on her heel to glare at him. “We are going _home_ , Percy. We are going to figure out what the Hells is going on and we are going _home_.”

“Yes, dear,” he answered, dazed. So many books. Some of them looked ancient. Some of them were obviously newly bound, covered in bright colors that hadn’t had a chance to fade yet.

“Crowley?” said a new voice from around and behind and through the collection of books. “What was… Oh!” The voice materialized into a plump man with frothy white hair, dressed in shades of cream and tan, a few inches taller than Percy and Vex. “You brought... guests? Erm. How lovely. Good afternoon.”

This one _definitely_ noticed Trinket, was definitely surprised, and very definitely refused (after the initial wobble) to treat the unexpected arrival of two people and a bear in his shop as anything other than a charming surprise.

Vex, bless her, rose to the occasion while Percy was still clearing his throat (and drying off his glasses again). “How do you do? I do apologize for interrupting your day like this. I’m Lady Vex’ahlia de Rolo. This is my husband Percy. Crowley was kind enough to take us under his wing when he found us earlier.”

“ _Was_ he?” the shopkeeper said, blue eyes sparkling with laughter. “How extraordinary.”

Crowley made a vaguely outraged noise and sidled past them. “Gonna just… kitchen… tea…” he said and disappeared.

Their white-haired host ignored this and advanced, offering his hand to Vex. “I’m Mr. Fell, owner and proprietor of this shop, and delighted to meet you.”

Percy shook the hand as it was offered to him in turn, curious to see how Fell would…

“And who is _this_ handsome creature?”

“This is Trinket,” Vex said.

Trinket, pleased, politely shook hands as well and Fell submitted to being sniffed without a quiver of apprehension that Percy could see.

“They’re not from Devon,” Crowley announced, reappearing without his mysterious sacks.

“Obviously,” Fell tutted.

“Should we be from Devon?” Percy asked, looking between them.

Crowley, he discovered, had shed both his mask and his dark glasses and stared back at him with an odd defiance in his definitely inhuman eyes. One long-fingered hand slicked rain-damp red hair back from his forehead.

“Said you’re from Whitestone. That’s the closest one,” Crowley answered with a shrug.

“Clearly, we should… where _were_ you, Crowley?”

“Went for a stroll.” Percy couldn’t quite stop his lips from twitching. Crowley’s tone was casual. Every fiber of his body was clearly ready for a confrontation. “Was in the mood for American, so I nipped over to the Fat Bear to get takeaway for tea.”

“Ooo!” said Fell, his round face breaking into a delighted smile. “Gumbo!”

“He met us shortly after we arrived and promptly became our guide,” Percy put in, backing up Vex’s story. Trinket’s attention, meanwhile, had swung back to Crowley at the mention of fat bears.

Percy wasn’t entirely sure what reaction Crowley was expecting, but he suspected it had something to do with the man’s eyes. Maybe there were anti-tiefling prejudices in London. He’d heard of such things, but he’d never had the misfortune to travel anywhere where that was actually a _reality_. Crowley looked more human than any tiefling Percy’d ever met before, but that wouldn’t matter to anyone who believed the sort of nonsense Percy’d read about. Regardless, Crowley’d been extremely helpful and Fell hadn’t given any sign of betrayal or a trap yet, so...

“How very...”

Crowley interrupted Fell, staring at Percy and Vex. “You don’t… You really don’t care. You’re not… M’not frightening or _anything_?” He sounded simultaneously surprised and insulted.

“Darling,” Vex said, her voice calm enough that Percy instinctively made room for her to draw an arrow that she didn’t have, “we’re not from your London. We have no idea if we should be frightened of you or not. But today’s hardly our first brush with magic and, so far, you’ve done nothing frightening. If your behavior changes, we will deal with that as it becomes necessary.”

Gods, he loved his wife.

Percy settled one hand in the small of Vex’s back and met Crowley’s gaze evenly. “I’d tell you that I’m already under contract and I don’t think Ipkesh would appreciate you poaching.”

“Ipkesh?” Crowley snorted. “That’s a name?”

“Signed and everything.”

“Huh.” Crowley licked his lips, quirked an eyebrow, and nodded acknowledgement to Percy. “And you’re not…”

“Like I said, darling,” Vex said again, “you haven’t done anything to make us feel threatened. If you decide to change that, we’ll deal with that as it happens.”

Crowley settled back on his heels, looking thoughtful. “Well,” he said after a moment, having apparently come to a decision, “I’m a demon. Anthony J. Crowley, Serpent of Eden. He’s an angel. Aziraphale, Guardian of the Eastern Gate. Not entirely human, just so y’know.” The wide grin he produced was full of teeth, genuine humor, and curiosity, which was a response that Percy would ordinarily appreciate, except…

Vex flinched and Percy felt any and all expression slide off his face. “In that case, sir, I’m fairly certain I’m the only one in this room who _is_ entirely human,” he stated, “and I’m the one with a contract. What’s your point?”

Fell… Aziraphale and Crowley glanced between themselves and their guests (Aziraphale’s gaze lingered briefly on Vex’s ears) and then Aziraphale shook his head and clapped his hands together. “Right. If everyone would follow me into the back, we’ll have some tea and sort out what comes next afterwards.”

Trinket followed eagerly, willing to be distracted from the tension in the air (and possibly to keep a close eye on the two strangers, in case they became overtly hostile). Percy hung back and pressed a kiss into Vex’s hair. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” she smiled tiredly at him. “Surprised me, is all. Not used to it coming from the not-human-enough direction.”

“As the human in the room, I am forced to admit that we do have an unhealthy fascination with elves. We find them unspeakably beautiful and all that.”

She snorted. “Oh yes?” 

“Haven’t you noticed? Our daughter is _the_ most adorable toddler on the face of Exandria.”

Vex’s face relaxed the rest of the way into a proper smile and she leaned in to kiss him gently. “I had noticed, but I thought ‘Maybe I’m biased’, so…”

Percy shook his head. “It’s _possible_ that Pike and Scanlan’s hypothetical children will be cuter, but since they don’t exist yet, I feel confident in Vesper’s claim to the title.”

She laughed and slid her hand into his. “Fair enough. Now that that’s settled, shall we…?”

Together, they followed in Trinket’s wake. Probably it was rude to leave their hosts with an unattended bear. Especially given that their hosts, presumably, intended to actually eat the food that Crowley had acquired.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Fat Bear was a real restaurant that, sadly, has closed due to Covid-19. I've never eaten there, but they had the most fantastic company logo and I couldn't resist being just a little (squarely) on the nose.


	3. Chapter 3

“Huh!” said Vex, startled out of the polite poise she’d wrapped around herself, as they stepped into the back room of A. Z. Fell’s shop.

Shockingly, the back room where an angel and a demon invited three interdimensional travelers to tea was bigger than it should have been. He’d _had_ a glance in the display window of the business next door as they walked past. (That window, he was certain, was just beyond the wall behind the huddle of clean mugs and a teapot at one end of this room.) There was no way four people, a bear, and a table big enough to seat the five of them, plus what was recognizably a kitchen (with what appeared to be a stovetop, but no attached firebox), should have have fit inside the structural confines of the space available, unless the shop next door was an elaborate illusion—not with the square footage of the bookshop itself taken into account, anyway.

“Crowley, the kettle should be hot, if you’d fill the pot.”

“I got the food!” Crowley protested. “How come I have to make the tea? They’ve seen magic. Just miracle it ready.”

“Psh,” said Aziraphale and waved him off and the other two into seats. “Oh my. Trinket…”

Trinket, having plopped down on his furry butt on one side of the table, was nosing curiously at Crowley’s discarded bags, which Percy now saw bore an emblem of a bear in a fancy hat and wearing a monocle.

“Do you need a hat, Trink?” Vex asked. “You’ll make Grog jealous.”

Trinket rumbled delight and nodded vigorously, but let Vex tug him away from Aziraphale’s preparations.

“You _just_ ate, buddy.” The bear turned an expression of horrified betrayal upon her and Vex laughed. “Well, you did! And besides, I doubt Crowley planned to feed a bear when he went to fetch supper.”

Percy settled beside Vex and didn’t mention that he _hadn’t_ just eaten, since it was equally unlikely that Crowley’d bought enough for two extra people.

“Nonsense,” said Aziraphale comfortably. “We’ll make do. Do you use utensils, Trinket, or would you prefer a bowl?”

“Bowl, please,” said Vex, “if you’re quite sure. Who’s a spoiled boy? Huh?”

Trinket, accepting the ruffles of his fur as his just and right due, clearly did not think himself spoiled in the slightest.

Despite his protests, Crowley poured steaming water from an oddly shaped container on the counter-top— _not_ on the stove, it was never anywhere near the stove—into a perfectly recognizable teapot. Shortly thereafter, he poured tea into four large-ish mugs (Trinket declined the offer of tea), which was more volume than should have fit in that teapot, and winked in response to Percy’s raised eyebrow. Aziraphale pretended not to notice and served thick stew and a grain-and-meat dish, full of fragrant and unfamiliar spices, with equal disregard to the disparity between the size of the various containers and the amount of food he piled onto their plates.

Make the tea the _proper_ way. Go out and buy food (despite whatever was going on in London). But then ignore all applicable alchemical laws in favor of convenient hospitality. Of course. They’d taken tea with Allura Vysoren; he didn’t know why he’d expected actual divine and infernal beings to pay more attention to the rules of reality than a merely human wizard.

“So,” Vex said, as Percy pulled his knife from his boot and settled to eat his dinner, “Crowley said he’d explain why there are so few people on the streets, once we were somewhere safe.”

Aziraphale blinked, once at Percy’s knife and once for Vex’s statement. “He… My dear…”

“Yeah,” Crowley said, pointedly picking up a spoon and digging into his own stew… gumbo? “They wanted to know where everyone is. Could hardly stand around and explain it all to them, what with the bear and no masks and the coppers coming.”

For a moment the four of them stared at each other, while Trinket calmly ignored them all.

“There’s a new virus,” Aziraphale said slowly.

A what?

“And that’s…” Percy prodded.

Crowley’s yellow eyes narrowed. “Sickness. Plague. Disease. Contagion.”

“Oh.”

Beside him, Vex relaxed hard enough that Percy winced and dropped his gaze back to his dinner. “Not vampires then.”

The pause before Crowley spoke was thick with… something. Bewilderment, judging by Crowley’s voice when he spoke again. “Not… what? No. Vampires? No vampires here. Unless you count the lot up at We…”

“No vampires,” Aziraphale said firmly.

Well. That was a step.

“London’s… well…” Percy looked up from his food and discovered that Aziraphale was _also_ eating with a knife and appeared to be quietly delighted by it. Huh. “Let’s just say it’s not the first mostly deserted city we’ve wandered into in the last few years.”

Aziraphale and Crowley both tilted their heads in that not-really-human way and regarded him thoughtfully. Crowley opened his mouth and then twitched in response to a muffled thud from under the table.

The rest of the meal was eaten in relative silence, apart from Aziraphale urging more food and tea upon his guests. However, after Percy objected that he had no interest in or capacity for a third helping of the crisply fried chicken, the angel sat back, sipping his tea and studying them through the steam.

“Protests should be starting soon,” he murmured. “That’ll get people back into the streets.”

Protesting the sickness? How exactly did one protest a sickness?

“Yes, well. Police brutality and systemic oppression should be protested,” Crowley said. His tone was sardonic. His eyes flashed golden fury. “Another biscuit, Trinket?”

Trinket agreed to another biscuit and accepted one from the agitated demon.

Before Percy could open his mouth to ask about the local polity and… whomever ruled London… and whether or not they needed to get involved, if the government was apparently bad enough that the locals were protesting, Vex elbowed him in the ribs hard enough that he almost spilled his tea.

“So,” Aziraphale said, “you’re not from Devon. Where _is_ your Whitestone then?”

 _That_ Percy knew. “Whitestone is a sovereign city-state in the northeastern corner of the continent of Tal’Dorei,” he rattled off. “It is located between the Whitsun Bay to the west and is separated from the continent of Wildemount by the Shearing Channel to the east.”

Beside him, Vex snorted softly and he rolled his eyes at her.

“Sorry,” she murmured to their hosts. “My husband turns into an animated book at the oddest of moments.”

“Ngk!” Crowley said into his tea.

Aziraphale put down his mug. “I’ve never heard of _any_ of those places,” he said crossly.

“Well, no. See…” Vex turned back to him.

“I should go back to being a book?”

She stuck her tongue out at him and he chuckled, despite the… everything about the evening. “We found an enchanted harmonica that, when played, transports the player—and whoever is touching them—between universes or collections of planes. Even if the player does not possess any magical talent of their own. That’s our current hypothesis anyway. The transportation definitely happened, given…” he gestured at his wife and Trinket, “… but the most similar spell that we’re aware of usually brings the instrument of focus along, which did _not_ happen. We moved from my workshop in Whitestone to wherever we were when you found us, Crowley. The harmonica didn't.”

The demon studied him for several seconds. “And… lots of people do this kind of magic where you’re from?”

“Plane shifting? Not at all. We only know two people capable of it. It requires a fairly sophisticated mastery of magical forces, from what I understand.”

“Well. And Artagan.”

“I’m not sure he counts as a person,” Percy said dubiously, “but sure. That makes three people.” Three. Keyleth, Allura, and Artagan. Because Delilah Briarwood was definitely dead and so was the son-of-a-bitch that was her husband.

Crowley squinted at them and then looked at Aziraphale. “No. _No_ , angel.”

“I said nothing,” the angel pointed out, twinkling placidly.

“You were thinking it. I could hear you. We are _not_ letting Book Girl anywhere near them. She’d go mad. Madder. Want to… dunno… _visit_ them or some nonsense.”

“She might have some notion about how to get them home,” Aziraphale pointed out.

“She… she might, yeah. Or she might run screaming for the hills…”

“That doesn’t sound like Anathema.”

“… because of their auras.”

Percy blinked, distracted from the memory of Vex shattering the night with the light of Pelor’s blessing and obliterating Sylas Briarwood from existence. Auras?

“Our what?” Vex asked.

Crowley waved a hand at them. “ _You’re_ under contract. That explains the way you smell. But what’s _your_ excuse? It makes me want to sneeze.”

Aziraphale tutted. “You’d think he’d never seen an angel and a demon fraternize.”

Crowley spluttered. “ _Fraternize_ is it, angel? We’re back to that again, are we?”

The angel pursed his lips, but his shoulders shook betrayingly and Crowley smirked back at him.

“Anyway,” Azirapahle said, refilling his mug from the definitely well-past-empty teapot. “Explain ‘planes’, if you would be so kind, Percy. The planes we have here are flying methods of transportation, woodworking tools, and geometrical conceits. Well, and grasslands, but those are spelled differently, these days.”

“We have the last three,” Vex answered. “How would a plane fly?”

Percy’s eyes crossed, imagining a plane with wings. “It would make trimming the labyrinth easier, though he probably means something more akin to airships.”

Vex stared at him. “Planes. On tiny, little brooms. … I want one.”

He snorted laughter. “I was picturing wings. Wouldn’t brooms get in the way of the blade?”

“Spoilsport.”

They grinned at each other before Percy remembered the actual question (and situation) at hand. “Right. Anyway. We have those planes, like Vex said. We also have _the_ Planes. Sort of… parallel realms of reality.”

“Well, some of them,” Vex said. “The Feywild and whatnot. I don’t think the Hells count as parallel. They’re not… at least the one _we_ saw was nothing like the Material Plane. Some of them are more… adjacent realms of reality?”

“Hells,” Crowley said. “Plural?” He sounded vaguely nauseated by the idea.

“Nine of them,” Percy answered. “Why? How many do you have here?”

“Just the one, thankssss…” Crowley took a gulp of tea. “Don’t… y’know... recommend visiting, really.”

“Noted.”

“The Material Plane is what you call your… home?” Aziraphale asked.

“The Material Plane is Exandria, our planet, and the moons and stars and all that stuff. Percy and I come from the continent of Tal’Dorei _on_ Exandria. Percy’s from Whitestone and my… I grew up in a few places.”

“And you two are…” the angel prodded. “Lady Vex’ahlia, I think you said, my dear?”

“Lord Percival de Rolo,” Vex said, gesturing at him, “Sophist of Native Ingenuity on the Council of Whitestone, and Lady Vex’ahlia de Rolo, Grand Mistress of the Gray Hunt.”

Aziraphale started to say something, his eyebrows raised appreciatively, but Crowley interrupted. “The bloody heaven’s a ‘Sophist of Native Ingenuity’? You sit and think at people all day?”

“Yes,” said Vex promptly before Percy could get a hand over her mouth.

“Keep him out of trouble?”

“Obviously not, darling,” Vex retorted, “given that we’re here.”

Laugh lines shifted around Crowley’s eyes. “Sounds familiar,” the demon said.

“Tch,” said the angel.

“I was _trying_ to rid our home of any leavings of the Briarwoods,” Percy muttered into his tea. “But yes, playing with my research probably isn’t the wisest course of action.”

Vex’s hand found his under the table and squeezed. “Since when has Vox Machina ever done the _wise_ thing, Percy?”

It was nice to know she forgave him. “… Getting out of Emon after the Conclave attacked? But I take your point.”

“Okay. So you played a magic harmonica that magically dropped you in an alternate universe, which happens to be ours, and now you want to go home,” Crowley summed up.

“We do, yes.” Percy said, and tried (and failed) not to think about Vesper growing up without them.

“This sounds quite like one of your science adventure stories,” the angel commented, sounding almost perky about it.

“ _Fiction_ , angel. Science- _fic_ … never mind. Y’know who we should talk to about this.”

“We can’t exactly involve young Newt without also involving Anathema, and I thought you didn’t want to do that.”

“Oh no. Book Girl’s not getting anywhere near them. We should call Adam.”

Aziraphale blinked.

He sat back.

He blinked some more.

“Actually…” he said. Then he shook himself. “We _can’t_ , dear boy.”

Crowley pulled a slim black object from… somewhere… and brandished it at the angel. “’Course I can.”

“There’s a _pandemic_ , Crowley. We can’t just pop over with four people and a bear. I shouldn’t even let you in here.”

“You… w… see… We are a demon and an angel, Aziraphale. We don’t _get_ ill, remember? Or pass it to anyone else. Or whatever. Viruses bounce right… do viruses bounce? Or do they just sorta squiggle? Anyway, they _don’t_. Not to us. And they’re not even _from_ here!”

“And therefore… good lord, they probably haven’t been vaccinated against anything. And then we just send them _home_ again, with whatever diseases they’ve been exposed to? One world’s history with that nonsense is quite enough, we needn’t…”

Crowley rolled his eyes. “Because you’ve never miracled anyone well before.”

“Yes, yes, very well.” Aziraphale waved a hand. 

The gesture was almost dismissive. The angel didn’t even look at them. But all the background aches acquired by Percy during the past several years just… stopped. Beside him, Vex exhaled in something too startled to be a sigh.

“But really, Crowley,” the angel complained, “you’re one to talk!”

“Ngk! Y… I would… You take that back!”

“No,” Aziraphale said, face serene.

“Not meaning to interrupt,” Vex interrupted, “but who is Adam?”

The pair looked at her, glanced at each other, and opened their mouths simultaneously.

“Well,” Aziraphale said.

“Ah,” Crowley said.

“He’s… a boy we know.”

“Used to be my boss’s kid.”

Percy straightened and tried to ignore the cold sweep of adrenaline and focus that tingled out from his spine. “Used to?” If there was some _other_ way home, he’d prefer to not entangle himself with the overlords of the local, singular Hell or their offspring. If there _wasn’t_ some other way home… well...

“Not really m’boss anymore. Not really his kid. _Really_ not his kid.”

Aziraphale looked… wry? fond? pained? “It was… complicated.”

“Really wasn’t, angel.” Crowley retorted, in defiance of the haunted lines etched harshly across his face. “World almost ended and then it didn’t. And _then_ we almost died.”

“Ah,” said Percy.

“That,” said Vex.

Their hosts paused.

“You…”

“We have some experience in that sort of thing, you could say.” Percy explained, fingers tightening around Vex’s laced with his.

Crowley licked his lips and startled, golden eyes widening as he stared at them. “Huh.”

“Quite. So this Adam is no longer… associated… with your boss?”

“Ex-boss.”

“Previous boss.”

“Yeah. No. He kinda… stopped. It was a… well, it worked, anyway. But he might be able to get you back to your harmonica.”

Vex lifted a finger. “Don’t really care about the harmonica, for the record. Just to put that out there.”

Crowley waved a dismissive hand. “Whatever.”

“We still can’t just…”

“We don’t have to _just_ ,” Crowley said, almost launching his little black rectangle (it honestly looked like a very cleanly enameled tile) across the kitchen in exasperation. “It’s the 21st century, angel. We just call him, let him talk to them, and he puts things back to rights. ‘Things’, in this case, being _them_ back where they belong. It’s not like he was anywhere near the bloody kraken, when he called _that_ into existence.”

Aziraphale sighed. “I suppose not.”

Kraken?

“And he’d be… no offense intended to this Adam, but it is some pretty intense magic.” Vex buried her free hand in Trinket’s fur. “Would he be able to do it?”

“Well...”

“He’s a good boy,” Aziraphale said, rather in the tone of one who had reached this conclusion reluctantly, but who, having reached it, was determined to give credit where it was due.

Crowley squawked with outrage. “He is not!” the demon spluttered. “He’s _twelve_.”

Oh gods. Percy remembered his younger siblings at that age.

Aziraphale shrugged. “If he decided to help, though, there’s literally nothing that could stop him, except…”

“Yes, well.” Crowley’s mouth twisted in unexplained bitterness. “It’d ruin her ineffable mystique, interfering personally. She hasn’t gone in for that much lately.”

“No, that’s true. So to answer your question, my dear,” Aziraphale said, turning back to Vex, “he’s certainly capable. It’s more a question of whether or not he’d be interested.”

Vex sat back, eyebrows quirked thoughtfully. “Any particular ideas on how to _make_ him interested? What does he want?”

“Twelve is a little younger than your usual targets, my dear,” Percy said mildly.

Vex sniffed. “I’ve bargained with gods. A _boy_ shouldn’t be too hard. But yes. That’s why I asked. Twelve-year-old boy is a slightly different set of parameters than I’ve dealt with lately.”

Their hosts blinked at them in bewilderment and curiosity.

“Targets?” Crowley asked.

“Gods?” Aziraphale inquired simultaneously.

“I’m afraid my wife is known across Exandria for getting her way, eventually,” Percy said, wholly unapologetic and privately delighted by the fact that the statement triggered a faint blush across Vex’s cheekbones.

“Unlike my husband,” Vex muttered.

“Obviously,” Percy agreed and snagged her other hand so he could tug it to his lips and kiss her wedding ring. “ _I_ am known for being rescued by a group of people who proceeded to drag me back into sanity, kicking and screaming. Also for inventing technology that has already irrevocably…”

Vex’s eyebrows went from amused to dangerous and he shut up.

“Better.” She patted his cheek.

He kissed her hand again, actually apologetic this time, and turned back to the angel and demon sitting across from them. “Anyway. Yes. What she said. How do we interest Adam enough to send us home, but not enough to make him want to keep us?”

Crowley’s eyes narrowed at that, but he nodded approval for the question. “Dunno,” he said, frankly. “He’s not…”

“Malicious,” Aziraphale supplied.

“… but he doesn’t always think things through. The trick is to still be alive when he gets around to sorting the messes he’s made.”

“He never actually _killed_ anyone,” the angel objected. “Even when the Them defied him, from what they’ve told us.”

“Would have done,” Crowley said stubbornly, “or let ‘em be killed, which… still end up dead. That bloody hellhound saved the whole blessed world, because Adam wanted a little dog he could teach tricks.”

“That was over a year ago, dear boy. He’s gotten much more… much less like his… your… and he gave me _several_ new books when he put this place back to rights.”

“Swear I still smell smoke when it rains,” Crowley muttered, picking up his mug of tea and burying his nose in it.

Aziraphale’s face went through an interesting array of expressions, ranging from discomfiture to anger and sorrow, before settling back into its usual serenity as he patted Crowley’s hand. “Well. We’re all still here. A little lingering smoke is a small price to pay, really.”

Percy glanced at Vex. She looked approximately as encouraged as he felt, which wasn’t very.

Crowley grunted and put down his mug. “Anyway. We should call the Them and see what they can cook up. Needn’t _go_ to Tadfield at all.”

“Ah yes. One of your picture radio things.” The demon’s entire body stiffened in outrage.“A ‘video call’,” the angel went on, brightening. “We shall… woosh them?”

“Zoom, angel,” Crowley corrected, tone long-suffering as he slouched into his chair again. “Yeah, I’ll text Adam. See if they’re all free tonight.”

Shortly thereafter, Crowley disappeared into the bookshop proper, tapping his black enameled tile with his thumbs as he went. Apparently the black thing was capable of some form of silent communication, which was intriguing. Aziraphale made sure no one wanted more tea and then started running water into the small sink for washing up. Vex met Percy’s gaze and then flicked her eyes past him in the direction Crowley’d gone.

Percy’s lips twitched.

Vex twinkled at him and then rose, collected their mugs, and carried them over to Aziraphale.

“Oh, really, Lady Vex’ahlia, you needn’t!” said the angel.

“Nonsense, darling,” said Vex. “Call me Vex. I wouldn’t dream of _ousting_ you from your own kitchen, but…”

And with that, Percy made his own escape.

To the books.

So many books.

He couldn’t actually read some of them (he was pretty sure he identified four different languages—plus the one that he _could_ read, for whatever reason). It was fascinating. One slim volume appeared to be a play entirely devoted to puns about the word “earnest”. Others books were unintelligible and without any illuminations to hint at their contents.

Eventually, a book that he couldn’t read, but that was full of geometrical diagrams, caught his attention. The volume was a few centuries old, by his guess, and reminded him of a mathematics books Professor Anders had once owned. This one, he saw as he carefully leafed through it, went in for pictures and explanations thereof (or, at least, that’s what he thought the blocks of printed text were), rather than the pages of esoteric calculations and equations that Anders liked. Even without linguistic comprehension, the book looked interesting, and he sat down on an uncomfortable sofa to see if he could puzzle out what the first diagram, and the points specified on it, was trying to explain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have gratefully made use of Lucia's floor-plans for Aziraphale's shop, which can be found over [here](https://mochacoffee.tumblr.com/post/611550631327580160/i-created-a-3d-model-and-floor-plan-of) in glorious detail.
> 
> For the record, Matt Mercer has (thus far) neglected to name the large body of water between the Whitestone Peninsula and the rest of Tal'Dorei, so I named it for him. There's a whole story behind it and everything. Percy is a very long-winded fellow when he starts explaining things.


	4. Chapter 4

“Huh?” said the boy with a mop of unruly, dirty blond curls from the boxy frame that held Aziraphale’s scrying mirror. The spell itself, connecting Aziraphale’s mirror with those used by the four children staring out at them, had been cast using a set of lettered buttons in an array that matched the old-bone coloring of the frame itself. It wasn’t a method of casting or, indeed, a form of scrying with which Percy was familiar. But that wasn’t exactly surprising by this point. “And you found them _where_?” the much-discussed Adam demanded.

“Over by St. Paul’s.” Crowley wasn’t smirking, but he was evidently enjoying the reveal that had followed basic introductions.

“They’ve got a _bear_ ,” Pepper said in tones of equal exasperation and jealousy.

“Obviously they’ve got a bear,” Brian retorted. “We’re not blind, Pep.”

“Actually,” said Wensley, adjusting his broad, sturdy-looking spectacles, “that’s not a type of bear I recognize.”

Pepper rolled her eyes. “They’re from another universe, stupid. Why would it be an Earth bear?”

Trinket growled softly and Vex shushed him. “Very true. He’s an Exandrian bear.”

“Does he do tricks?” Brian asked. “Dog does tricks. He even does ‘em in Spanish.”

The small head of a black-and-white dog appeared from Adam’s lap and panted at everyone while Adam stroked his ears.

“He’s very clever,” Vex answered. “Aren’t you, buddy?”

The large bear looked unimpressed by both Adam’s dog and by Vex’s flattery, but nodded anyway.

“Anyway,” Crowley broke in. “Here they are. Thought y’might have a better notion of how to send ‘em home if you actually saw them.”

Adam tilted his head. “I mean, I guess. They definitely don’t belong _here_ , but I dunno where they _do_ go.”

“Ah.” Aziraphale looked thoughtful. “Did you know where I went when I was possessing Madam Tracy?”

“Outside of her, obviously,” Adam said, as if it was and had been obvious.

“What about the kraken?”

“Or my new books and Crowley’s automobile.”

The child pondered that for a moment. “N-no,” he said at length. “The kraken just sort of happened. And then I un-happened it. But I never… I never _asked_ it where it wanted to be. I might have sent it to the wrong place. Or… I dunno. It might have just stopped being a kraken. Or stopped existing at all. I dunno where it came from or where it went away to. Same with the aliens and tornadoes and things.” Adam shrugged. “And… bookshops should have good books in them. So yours did, after I put it back. Cars are easier. They’re just cars. Either they work or they don’t.”

Crowley looked vaguely insulted on behalf of something—whatever a car was, apparently— while Aziraphale merely twinkled at the boy who’d just insulted his taste in books.

“And I don’t _think_ ,” Adam concluded, “that you two… three… want to accidentally stop being.”

“Not so much,” Vex answered, blinking.

Adam nodded approval, but one side of his face screwed up in something like helpless sympathy. “I don’t really know what to do then. Have you asked Anathema?”

“ _No_ ,” Crowley said.

“What we need, _actually_ ,” said the boy with glasses, “is some research.”

Brian rolled his eyes. “How are we gonna research people from another universe, Wensley?”

“Adam researched nuclear reactors and aliens and secret Tibetan tunnel people,” Pepper pointed out. (“I did _not_ ,” Adam objected. “I only read about them. Research is for school and… and science and stuff.”) “Why _can’t_ we research people from another universe? We have two of them sitting right there to ask them questions. Archaeologists can’t ask people questions.”

Wensley opened his mouth and Pepper glared.

“They can’t ask the people they’re researching,” she clarified acerbically.

Percy hid a smile. Pepper and Whitney would have either gotten along swimmingly or loathed each other’s very existence. “Well then, ask us questions,” he invited. “How long does this last?” he added, gesturing at the scrying mirror and glancing at Aziraphale who, despite using vocabulary that shoved Crowley past incoherence and into a sort of dazed acceptance, had been the one to actually cast the spell.

“Oh,” Aziraphale said dismissively, “until we’re done. It’ll be fine.”

Well that was much more convenient than doing this in ten-minute chunks. As was the fact that Aziraphale’s mirror was connected, somehow, with all four children simultaneously in visibly distinct locations, which was well beyond the capabilities of any scrying spell Percy’d ever heard of before. Percy nodded and looked back at the four children.

“You should take notes,” Adam… ordered? “Can you write quickly?”

Percy blinked. “Yes?”

“There are a lot of questions,” the kid said with a shrug.

“Fair enough. Just a moment.” Percy rummaged in his pockets, quickly finding a piece of drawing lead, several yards of string, the magical stick of detecting magic, and… an unexpected lack of partially scribbled paper. He’d started his notes on the harmonica on it before he began sketching diagrams. It must still be on his work bench.

Vex raised an eyebrow at him and then looked at Aziraphale. “Could we trouble you for some paper, Aziraphale?”

“Certainly, certainly.” The angel opened a drawer under the scrying mirror and produced a stack of papers, layered and gummed together along one edge.

Percy flipped through the stack thoughtfully. Ingenious. “I should try this…”

“Percy, darling.”

“Yes, yes. Go on.” Percy dropped the papers atop the geometry book he’d been studying earlier, adjusted his spectacles, and looked up attentively.

Adam paused for another second and then nodded sharply.

Pepper pounced. There was no other word for it. “Where are you from? How many different kinds of people do you have there?”

Vex almost cackled for that question as he jotted it down, which was a good sound.

“Is the _bear_ a person?” Wensley asked. “What kind of bear is he?”

“Why are your clothes normal colors?” Brian piped up.

Percy’s lead stopped moving as his head tipped back up to stare at the boy.

“Why wouldn’t they be normal colors?” Adam asked, frowning.

“I don’t know! They’re from a different universe, they could have _any_ kind of colors.”

Wensley’s head tilted thoughtfully. “We probably wouldn’t be able to see it, even if they did.”

“That’s stupid. How can you have a color you can’t see.”

“Like the… whatsit,” Wensley said.

“Shrimp,” supplied Pepper.

“Right. That shrimp that can see all the colors ever. _They_ would be able to see colors that are normal for them, but _we_ couldn’t, because they aren’t normal for us. They mightn’t even _be_ colors for us.”

Brian looked dissatisfied. “They _aren’t_ shrimp though.”

“That’s comforting,” Vex murmured in a soft aside.

“I don’t know. Seeing more colors sounds intriguing.”

“We could just go to the Feywild.”

“Let’s not.”

“Do you have aliens?” Adam asked, effectively ending the conversation about shrimp and bringing everyone back on topic.

“Ooo!” chorused the other children.

“What are aliens?” Vex asked.

The children looked horrified.

“They’re… people?”

“From another planet.”

“Or another whole solar system. That’s more likely, really. We’d have noticed them on our planets by now. Probably. If they have proper bodies and things.”

“Wait. Do you _have_ other planets?”

“We do, yes. And moons.”

“ _Moons_?” demanded Wensley, sitting up straighter.

“Two?”

“... You’ve got two moons,” Brian stated flatly.

“Yes? How many do you have?”

“ _One_ ,” the boy grumbled, in tones of deep disgust.

Wensley tilted his head thoughtfully. “What color’s your sky?”

“Blue, by day.”

The kids nodded approval.

“Okay, let’s start there,” Percy said, glancing down at his list and then at his wife. Where to start?

Vex, sensibly, went for the most obvious option. “This is Trinket. Say hello, buddy.”

Trinket rumbled agreeably and waved.

“He certainly thinks he’s a person, don’t you, Trink?”

The bear looked offended and nodded.

“Why’s he called Trinket?”

“Because…” Vex’s smile faded, but then she inhaled sharply and recovered it. “My brother Vax used to find baubles and trinkets to sell, so we’d have money for food. He’d go into the towns and I’d wait outside in the forests and hunt for small game. I was honestly a little jealous, so when I found Trinket—he was just a cub then—caged up by some… very bad people… I stole him from them and then I had my _own_ Trinket.”

That was possibly the most child-friendly version of that story Percy’d ever heard.

He picked another question. “We’re from… how detailed an answer do you want?”

Three of the four shrugged in near unison while Wensley adjusted his glasses.

Well then.

“We’re from the nation of Whitestone, on the continent of Tal’Dorei on Exandria.” He wasn’t entirely sure how, or if, that was supposed to be useful. But then, knowing the names of things always made a difference in the old stories and was still important when doing idiotic things like signing contracts with devils. So perhaps it would help, after all. “I could try to draw a map, but I’m better at technical drawings than cartography.”

“What’s cartography?” Brian asked.

“Map drawing.”

“Ooo.”

“We have other planets, but nobody lives on them.”

“As far as we know.”

“As far as we know.” Vex’s lips twitched. “As for shrimp… _do_ our shrimp see extra colors, darling?”

“Haven’t the faintest idea, but it seems reasonable given their environment. Keyleth might know.”

“We should ask her.”

“I’ll add it to the list?”

“Do you _always_ do that?” Pepper demanded.

Percy blinked. “Do what?”

“Talk like you’re the only people in the room. _They_ do it too.” The girl waved indignantly at their hosts. “Like they’re _so_ clever _._ ”

“I seem to recall you and your friends talking about shrimp without the rest of us first,” Vex said mildly. “What questions have we got left, Percy?”

Percy pointed.

“He’s a… large bear? And there are lots of different races in Exandria.”

“Race is a colonialist invention designed to reassure invaders of their superiority,” Pepper retorted before anyone else on the scrying mirror could so much as take a breath.

“Ngk!” said Crowley from behind the hand he’d clapped over his mouth.

Vex blinked. “What?”

Wait.

“You… _only_ have humans here?” Percy asked, leaning forward. “People, I mean,” he clarified, given questions about Trinket’s personhood.

“It’s not _funny_ , Crowley,” Brian snapped.

“S’not!” Crowley agreed easily, face still twitching with amusement. “Her _face_ was.”

Pepper rolled her eyes.

“I mean, except for them and their lot,” answered Adam, waving at Aziraphale and Crowley. “… Yeah. That we know how to talk to, anyway. Why? What’ve you got?”

“Humans, dwarves, elves, goliaths, halflings, gnomes, tiefling, dragonborn, dragons, orcs, hobgoblins, aasimar, genasi, giants…” Percy gestured helplessly. “And so on. There are subsets of most of them and a _lot_ of them can successfully… um… intermingle bloodlines, so it’s difficult to determine how many separate and distinct races there actually are. It’s distinguished by cultural origin stories as much as by physical or magical characteristics.”

“’Intermingle bloodlines’, Percy?” Vex said, voice unsteady. “Really?”

“Would you prefer ‘successfully cross-breed, with viable, fertile offspring’?”

“I am, rather, aren’t I?”

Percy felt his ears go hot and Vex grinned evilly at him.

Aziraphale’s shoulders were quivering.

What even was his life today?

“I had noticed, actually, that your ears are noticeably different from Percy’s, Vex,” Wensley piped up to sounds of agreement from the other children. “Is that why?”

Vex shifted her attention to the boy and her smile warmed into something far more maternal, an expression that still made Percy’s breath catch. “I am, in fact, one of those hybrids, yes. My father was an elf and my mother was a human.”

“Wicked,” opined Adam, in tones of deep appreciation.

“It’s had its moments, I suppose.”

Pepper’s eyes narrowed. “They fuss about ‘hybrids’ where you’re from?”

Vex’s smile went tight. “Sometimes. Just the assholes though. So…” she shrugged.

“Here too.”

“I thought you said there were only humans here.”

“Yeah,” said Brian, “but we come in different colors. S’what Pep was talking about before. Well. Sorta. _Some_ people think they’re better than other people, just ‘cos of what color their skin is. Or other stuff. Like living in ‘vans instead of buildings. Skin’s the most obvious, a lot.”

“Good gods.” Percy sat back in his chair, blinking.

“And mostly they’re in charge, so it’s all very…”

“Stupid,” said Adam.

“Unacceptable,” said Pepper.

“Actually completely ridiculous,” said Wensley.

Vex just nodded. “Vax and I… there was a lot of that,” she said softly, in a tone of voice Percy rarely heard from her, even when she spoke of her childhood—a tone that Percy worked very hard to keep anyone from provoking, under normal circumstances. “Especially while we were growing up. We looked and acted too much like humans—like our mother—according to the population of Syngorn. And our father.”

Pepper’s head tilted as she stared almost suspiciously out of the scrying mirror at Vex. “So what d’you do,” she asked, “when people are arseholes to you?”

Vex snorted and then inhaled sharply. “I ran away,” she said bluntly. “Vax was with me, so it was easier to pretend it didn’t matter so much, with him on my side. Eventually I made some friends who weren’t assholes. Or were different sorts of assholes, anyway. And then we saved the world, so. Well. There are still jerks, but they don’t say anything to my face. And they know my friends and I could kill them, or otherwisemake them _really_ regret it,if we wanted to, so they mostly don’t say anything at all.”

She fell silent and Percy reached over to squeeze her hand. She squeezed back, but didn’t look at him.

“That’s not very helpful, is it?”

Pepper shrugged. “Saved the world,” she said. “No one noticed.”

Percy, after a glance at the six locals, decided she absolutely wasn’t joking, and felt his stomach roil at the thought.

“Well, _that’s_ completely unfair,” Vex grumbled. “World-saving isn’t as much fun if it doesn’t come with clout.”

Aziraphale shifted in his seat, gaze flicking to Crowley. Crowley sat very still, his jaw tight, and did not acknowledge the angel at all.

Vex shrugged back at Pepper. “I was a little older than you, when Vax and I ran away, but not by much and it took us a while to find friends. You’ve already got friends, it looks like, so you’ve got a head start there. It… gods, this sounds trite, but it does, eventually, get better. Or it did for me, anyway. If only because I wasn’t a child and could force more people to pay attention to me.”

The girl studied Vex for several seconds, before one corner of her mouth tucked into something that was wholly unrelated to a smile, but was a sort of acknowledgment. “Okay.”

While Percy was outwardly holding his wife’s hand and breathing very steadily (and inwardly cursing Syldor Vessar and making contingency plans to absolutely, definitely ensure the harmonica’s destruction if they managed to get home), a fifth frame popped onto the scrying mirror and a dark-haired woman, wearing glasses and a slightly improbable shirt, peered curiously at them.

“Hey all,” she said at the same time as Crowley jerked upright in his chair.

“What are _you_ doing here?” Crowley wailed. “Aziraphale, you…”

“I didn’t add her,” Aziraphale said placidly… nay, smugly.

“I did,” Adam interrupted. “Hi, Anathema. Crowley found some people from another universe and their bear and they want to go home. He didn’t want to call you.”

“Tch,” scoffed Anathema. “Crowley thinks I cheat at cards because I won’t let him miracle the deck.”

Crowley spluttered. “I think you cheat at cards because you _do_ ,” he retorted.

Anathema ignored him in favor of tilting her head, presumably at Percy and Vex. “Interesting. And you can’t figure out how to send them back?”

“Don’t wanna send them to the wrong place by accident,” explained the boy.

“Very responsible of you. Hi,” she smiled suddenly, “I’m Anathema.”

“Percy de Rolo. My wife…”

“Vex. And this is Trinket.”

At _that_ point, for some reason, the woman’s mouth dropped open. “Y… Percy. And Vex. De Rolo.”

Trinket grumbled and Vex scritched soothingly.

“Yes?” Percy confirmed, aiming for polite confusion and succeeding reasonably well..

“Huh.” She stared for several more, increasingly awkward, seconds. “What are you _doing_ here?”

“Trying to get home?”

Crowley rolled his eyes and suddenly pinched Percy’s arm.

“Ow!”

“They’re real, Book Girl. Can we get on? D’you have anything actually useful to contribute? A prophecy or two? You can’t keep them.”

“I… w…” Anathema visibly shook herself and re-focused. “Adam. Do you remember the story I was telling you about Vox Machina?”

Percy froze. Beside them, Trinket huffed when Vex’s hand clenched in a startled fist in his fur.

Adam’s nose wrinkled. “Is that the one with the guy who saw stuff in his poo?”

Vex’s hand relaxed and stroked apologetically where she’d grabbed Trinket’s side even as she shot a glance at her husband.

Percy, wide-eyed, twitched a shoulder. He had no idea. A woman in this universe had no reason to know about Vox Machina. Sealing Vecna away hadn’t…

Well, maybe it _had_. The side-effects of banishing a god might very well touch more than one universe. He was a god, after all. But still. Crowley and Aziraphale hadn’t recognized them and he would have expected _them_ to know, if this woman did.

“That’s the one.”

“Oh. Is that where you’re from, Vex and Percy?”

“We… do have a friend who used to shit-scry, yes.”

“Gross. And now you’re… here.”

“Evidently.”

Silence, as the five faces stared at them from Aziraphale’s mirror box.

“Weird,” Brian concluded.

“Percy, Vex, would you… _so_ weird,” Anathema muttered, “… would you look at some pictures and tell me if anything looks familiar?”

“… Sure?”

“Aziraphale, can you switch it so my screen is the biggest?”

“Certainly, my dear.” Aziraphale, eyes alight with curiosity, leaned forward from where he’d been listening to the entire conversation to press a few of the lettered buttons in front of his mirror. “All set. Carry on!”

“Okay. Hang on a sec.” The woman glanced slightly to one side, eyes flicking as she scanned whatever she was looking at. “Here we go.”

Her face disappeared. In its place was an almost accurate image of the De Rolo crest, complete with the new star that Vex had added.

Percy stared.

After a moment, Vex cleared her throat. “Yes. We know that.” Her hand tightened around his and he twitched his brain away from the possibilities (and impossibilities) that were cascading through it.

Anathema, invisible now, made a noise that might have been a squeak. “Great. Okay. Um. How ‘bout this?”

What followed was only slightly less surreal, as painting after drawing after delicate sketch flicked by as fast as they could say they didn’t recognize it (or not as thoroughly as the crest anyway).

Eventually, several minutes later, Vex said “Wait. That’s…”

“That’s the Sun Tree,” Percy agreed hoarsely, shaken by the evident existence of _some_ sort of record of his family and life in a completely different universe than his own. “ The Sun Tree and the Tipsy Quorum.”

Anathema’s face reappeared as suddenly as it had vanished. “You’re sure?”

“Yes,” he stated. “Anathema, how…”

She ignored him. “Adam, can you work with that?”

“Probably?”

The children’s faces popped up again and Adam looked… reasonably confident.

“Three misplaced people, two anchors, one power source sending them home.” Anathema chewed on her lip. “It’s tidy. Ought to work.”

“If it matters,” Vex said. “Keyleth isn’t in Whitestone right now. The lady with the red hair by the tree in the picture? She’s not there. And it’s just over three weeks after Midsummer.”

Adam brightened. “Thanks. That does help. Have you got all your things?”

Percy slipped the wand and his writing lead back into his pockets and nodded. “I think so, yes.”

“Thank you so…” Vex said.

“Okay then,” said Adam.

“… much for all ow!” Vex’s sentence cut off as all three of them thumped approximately a chair’s height to the ground (well, a large root in Percy’s case) and found themselves sprawling in an inelegant sort of way in the darkness under the boughs of the Sun Tree.

Various denizens of Whitestone’s evening startled and then bowed or nodded and went on about their business. Lord and Lady de Rolo appearing or disappearing by the Sun Tree was pretty normal behavior. Above them, a handful of ravens cackled hoarsely.

“Well that was prompt,” Percy said, straightening. “I… um… “ He stared down at the large book he seemed to have brought back with him. “Huh. Thorough sort of spell-caster, Adam.”

“Jamison!” Vex called to a young man with paint-stained hands who was heading for the Quorum. “What’s the date?”

The artist stared at her blankly for a moment before grinning. “The day before your anniversary, my lady, last I checked. You gonna gloat about it?”

“Absolutely, darling,” Vex drawled and waited until he’d expressed his well-wishes and gone on his way before sagging into Percy’s shoulder. “Gods bless that boy. He actually did it.”

Trinket dropped his head into her lap and Percy wrapped both arms around his wife.

“Happy anniversary, Vex’ahlia.”

“Welcome home,” she replied, muffled in his shoulder. She clung to him (he clung to her) for several seconds before twisting her head to kiss him. “We are _not_ keeping the harmonica, Percy.”

“We are absolutely not keeping the harmonica. I’ll borrow the Sending Stone from Cassandra in the morning and let Allura know what we’ve found.”

“Good.”

He got another kiss.

“Do you think there’s any pie left?” Percy asked, after a pleasant and comforting (if not comfortable) interlude of kisses.

Trinket perked and almost knocked both of them over.

Vex laughed. “Shall we go find out?”

“Let’s.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just an epilogue left!


	5. Epilogue

“Huh,” said Crowley, head tilting to one side as he studied the gap in Aziraphale’s mathematics shelf. “Oi, angel! Who’s gone and bought Newton’s Principia? How’d they convince you to part with it?”

“I _beg_ your pardon,” Aziraphale said, rounding the corner from the travelogues. “No one’s so much as glanced at Newton for months, poor boy. What are you talking about?”

Crowley fought a grin and pointed at the empty space.

Aziraphale’s face went grim.

Angelic, even.

“A _thief_ ,” he breathed, “who steals _books_? In _my_ shop?”

“Unmitigated cheek,” Crowle said, losing the fight with his grin. “Dunno what the world’s coming to. Keep it all from ending and they just run around stealing maths books. Honestly.”

This was going to be even more entertaining than when the Kray boys tried to buy the shop via middlemen in the mid-’50s. He had not, for the record, been privy to _either_ side of that (attempting to purchase the shop or mysteriously disappearing the prospective buyers, respectively). He’d been then, as he was now, an uninvolved but _extremely_ interested third party. 

He was almost tempted to miracle up some popcorn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thus concludes this bout of ridiculousness. At least until Aziraphale explains how/when he enacts vengeance...
> 
> I hope you've enjoyed!


End file.
